


Baptism by Fire

by Himmelreich



Category: Constantine (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, bring your partner to work day, exorcist edition, please don't deal with open wounds the way it's done here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich
Summary: John calls Angela, asking for a favour.





	Baptism by Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/gifts).



> _For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places._ \- Eph 6,12

The call comes in just as she’s trying to push down the door handle of her ridiculously small secluded office with her elbow, arms loaded with a stack of folders high enough that the top is tucked under her chin. It’s really only years of attending Catholic school that keep her from cursing with a more blasphemous expletive than an exasperated “ _Come on”_ , but somehow she manages to wrestle the door open after all, dropping the papers on her desk chair and fumbling her cell phone from her pocket right before her mailbox would answer.

“Dodson,” she gasps. The phone trembles slightly in her grasp; both of her arms complain about the dragging of pounds of paper and evidence boxes from down in the archives to her office every spare minute for the past few days.

Technically, she’s supposed to take it easy. At least, that had been the directive from her boss, after she had been miraculously at the scene of two armed robberies, one kidnapping and one gang shootout in one week. “A streak of bad luck” he called it, and Angela doubted she could convince him that there was no such thing as luck involved even if she wanted to. And while she might have actively sought out high-risk crime scenes, ripe with demonic influence, and was prepared for the sight, the blood, the desperation, many of the colleagues on her team were not.

So, she had ultimately agreed to a few days of deskwork while everyone recharged their batteries, and after she had gotten her leftover reports in order, she made her way down to the station archives.

“Knock yourself out, Detective,” was all McMillan said when she asked him for permission to revisit cold cases, with the vaguely pitying look of someone who thought that she must either be on some foolishly idealistic mission in the name of long forgotten victims, or really obsessed with getting some successes under her belt, neither of which boosted your popularity with other officers. Angela didn’t care what he might think, or anyone else, for that matter. It’s great practice for her abilities, and if she ends up being able to help solve some of the cases on the way, all the better.

“Hello?” she prompts now, when all she can make out on the other end of the line is the rustling sound of someone covering the receiver, and then indistinct mumbling. In her field, these kind of delays could spell both prank calls and someone in immediate danger, so she waits, listening attentively, trying to make out any more alarming background noise, just in case.

Then, finally: “Angela?”

She would recognise that voice anywhere, and her response is prompt.

“John?” she asks softly, quickly shutting the door.

It’s not paranoia, it’s self-interest, John had told her during one of their previous run-ins at a crime scene, when they had gotten some take-out, heavy on the spices to drive out the stench of sulphur clinging to the roof of their mouths. Once you get involved with the occult, keep everyone else as far away as possible. You don’t know how much you can lose until it’s already too late.

“Yeah. Hold on.” She can hear him moving again, a door being shut, and then the connection is crystal clear. “Sorry, interference. Angela, can you do me a favour?”

Coming from him, that wasn’t a question you should give a reply to without asking about the specifics first, that much she had learned by now. If she hadn’t, she would have lost her job here a long time ago.

“What _kind_ of favour?”

“Nothing major, really. If possible, just make sure no patrol cars are dispatched to my location. Saves me the hassle of dealing with them.”

“Why would there be-”

Her question is answered by a piercing scream, so abrupt and frightening she almost drops her phone as she startles, old professional response of alertness followed just a split second later by the distinct feeling that something had been _off_ about the scream. Nothing but a vague sentiment, the kind that she would have dismissed as irrational gut feeling or her imagining things, until everything had changed the day Isabel jumped off the roof.

“John, what is going on there?”

“I’m working on it,” he replies calmly, entirely nonplussed by the scream going by the sound of his voice. “So, about that favour-"

She hangs up before he can finish the question.

 

 

“I asked you to _keep_ the police away from here, not _bring_ it.”

John leans in the doorway, blocking her entry. It’s a lovely house, sided with white wood, and a Spanish style tile is hanging above the doorbell reading “Daniel and Janet Lang”. She had expected as much from tracking down the address by the landline number, because this is a more prim and proper residential area, away from the slick high-rises of downtown and the apartment blocks of the commuting district.

These streets here are the attempt to erect and maintain a version of the American white picket fence ideal even in the ever growing city of Los Angeles, rows of neat two-story houses with gable roofs, all separated each other by generous stretches of perfectly trimmed lawn and fences or hedges. It’s a far cry from John’s den, or the places she has usually crossed his path, but if she has learned one thing so far, it’s that evil doesn’t discriminate in that regard.

John himself doesn’t look any different from usual, which means that surprisingly enough, he doesn’t look out of place in suit and tie in this environment. Well, not if you didn’t know that he wasn’t a real estate agent or office worker, that he had occult symbols tattooed on his arms and faint scars of multiple suicide attempts as well as the devils hand ripping through hit chest on his skin, barely more than silvery shadows.

But Angela knows, and she also can’t help noticing the vaguely disapproving frown and the air of exhaustion that surrounds him like mist, mellowing out the sound of his voice, dampening the emotions she can get a read on.

She has yet to see John not at least somewhat tired. She’s seen the same kind of weariness in some of her superiors, those who took their work home with them, never stopped pondering the state of the world and the evil within it, letting it wear down their spirit wherever they went. But John was different. He had seen hell; he didn’t worry, he _knew_.

“I’m hardly _the police_.” She crosses her arms, and tries peering past him into the hallway. He might be able to deal with demons, but she’s fairly confident she could make her way past him, if necessary. She had been the champion in close combat practice in her graduation class not for nothing. There is no more screaming, however, and from her location on the stairs, she can’t smell any sulphur or smoke, either.

“That badge says otherwise,” he remarks, eyes falling down to her belt. She clicks her tongue in annoyance.

“Listen, you wanted me to keep a patrol car from showing up, and I did by taking your call as a noise complaint and assigning myself to this job, so unless things go way out of hand, they should leave us be for now. You’re welcome.”

He raises his brows slightly in response, far from a thank you, more of a _so why are you still here, then_.

“However, you can’t just call me with someone screaming their lungs out in the background and _not_ expect me to worry, John.”

“I have everything under control.”

His statement is belied by another scream from somewhere in the house in this very moment, more muffled than before on the phone. Which in all likelihood meant that in the meantime, the person in question had been gagged, which isn’t quite putting Angela’s mind at ease.

John sighs, and Angela casts a quick glance up and down the street. It’s eerily empty, most of its residents still at work or shopping or whatever you might do if you had the money to live like this, but still, it’s a risk having the door open like that, so Angela gives John a resolute push against the chest, following him inside and shutting the door behind her.

 

“That doesn’t sound like ‘under control’ to me.” He doesn’t move back further than she has pushed him, staying still against her palm, and she can feel his heartbeat under her fingertips, steady and calm.

“As under control as these things get,” he amends. “There is no such thing as a sure-fire way when it comes to exorcisms.”

Her own breath hitches at the word.

“You’re here for an exorcism?”

“Well, I’m not here for book club meeting, if you can imagine that.”

There’s another muffled scream from upstairs, and John begins to pull away.

“I’ll keep working then, unless there’s anything else-”

“Let me help."

The words have left her lips before she consciously made the decision, and he turns to look back at her with a frown.

“Let me assist you,” she repeats, with conviction, back straight, without flinching under his scrutinising gaze.

“It won’t be pleasant,” he says, voice low and foreboding with the implication of all the things he has witnessed so far.

“Yes.”

“Might be utterly horrifying, even.”

“I understand.”

“More than that, it’s physically dangerous, too. People have died when conducting exorcisms.”

“I know.”

He’s still looking at her, maybe searching for any sign that she’s hesitating or afraid, but she is not.

“I can take it, John,” she assures him. More than that, she feels as if she can’t leave him alone now that she’s here. She might not be an expert on the occult yet, but even with her newly acquired basic knowledge she knows that one should best never attempt any ritual involving demonic powers alone. “Don’t you trust me?”

There’s a pause, and with his face hard to read as usual, for a second she worries what would happen if he said no. But then, he just sighs, again, but it’s more resigned than exasperated.

“Just remember I warned you." With that, he turns and begins climbing the stairs, throwing her a look over his shoulder. “Well then, my apprentice, shall we?”

 

 

Her boots sink into a plush, cream coloured carpet as she reaches the corridor on the first floor, the walls hung with heavy silver picture frames holding photos of vacation trips, it seems. It all still seems painfully normal as she trails behind John’s dark figure, all nerve endings on fire.

“It doesn’t smell like sulphur, why’s that?”

“Because that bastard is still contained to a certain degree. Not yet a halfbreed who is his own little walking portal to hell, bringing that stench wherever he goes. But he will be, if this goes wrong.”

“Have exorcisms of yours ever gone wrong?”

John turns left towards a door, his hand lingering on the handle as he gives her a look that is impossible to decipher.

“Do you really want to know the answer to that question?”

He doesn’t wait for her reply, but pushes the door open, stepping aside so she can get a full view of it.

 

Her professional habit has her scan the room with quick ease, assessing the situation: a door leading to a walk-in wardrobe to the left, a dresser next to it, windows on the opposite side, overlooking the driveway, another door to an adjacent room on the right, and next to it a king size bed. On top of it, bound to the bedposts by wrists and ankles, is a man in his forties that she identifies as Daniel Lang, although he looks barely the same person as he does on the photos on the hallway.

Neatly combed back hair, carefully maintained just-right level of tan, pastel coloured pristine polo shirt, bright smile with perfectly straight teeth - it’s hard cross-referencing that with the man staring back at her frantically, pupils blown wide as if he was tripping high on cocaine, face pale with dark blue veins like roots of fungi stark across it, sweat and, to Angela’s concern, blood having soaked into the fabric of his rumpled white t-shirt.

He groans around the band of dark fabric keeping him mostly silent, pulling at the ropes with newfound vigour, staring at her. For a second, she feels her carefully crafted normal persona of before resurface, telling her that nothing here was supernatural, but that she had walked in on a cruel sadist torturing an innocent man for whatever twisted reason; that her first instinct should be incapacitating known mentally unhinged occultist John Constantine and getting Mr Lang to a hospital.

“Stay down, by the powers that be and that you shall bow to,” she hears John’s commanding voice behind her in that moment, making the hair in the back of her neck stand up, and the man twists away sharply with a muffled guttural snarl.

Angela shakes her head, overcoming that faint echo of suppressed power, and now she can see things clearer for what they are. The weirdly fluctuating aura around the man, the darkness lingering behind his eyes, the way that the bruised wounded skin below the restraints is pulling itself together only to split open instantly upon touching the bindings again, which are no doubt imbued with some form of enchantment by John.

“I didn’t expect it to be the husband,” she admits when she finds her voice again.

“Against popular opinion, children and young women do not have the monopoly on demonic possession,” John retorts dryly, squeezing past her into the room to start rummaging in an old, battered doctor’s bag he’s put on top of the dainty white dresser. The leather has some curious singe marks. “But I don’t have to tell you that it still happens to them all the same.”

“What about the wife?”

 

John jerks his head in a vague direction, and with quite some instinctual reluctance, Angela crosses the threshold herself, walking around the bed in a safe distance to cast a glimpse into the other connecting room. It’s some form of home office, with a desk and bookshelves, and a narrow couch on the far side, on which Mrs Lang is lying, eyes open but vacant, staring at the ceiling, the only movement being the slow, shallow rise of her chest under a thin silk blouse.

“What did you do to her?” As of now, Angela doesn’t have a lot of experience with the black magic John allegedly dabbled in, but the idea that someone could reduce another human being to such a state via means she didn’t understand gives her a rush of anxiety.

“I made her take some Valium, because she was close to hyperventilating. She’ll be fine.”

Angela turns back to stare at him incredulously. The mundane solution should be reassuring, but somehow, she feels bizarrely disenchanted.

“I see.”

John beckons her over, and she follows suit, holding out her hands as he pours holy water over them. The excess trickles down and leaves dark stains on the light carpet, but Angela thinks that if the couple made it out of this entire affair alive, minor damage to their place would be the smallest of their sorrows.

“How do these people find you?” she asks, watching as John fastens a bracelet holding a strange looking amulet at its centre around her wrist with nimble fingers. “I doubt you’re listed in the Yellow Pages.”

He chuckles. Behind her, the creature groans again, as if in response.

“Not quite. Other people refer afflicted to me, usually. In this case, a friend of mine who works as a doctor at the hospital the wife came to for help. If you do this for long enough, the word spreads by itself.”

The question of payment is on her mind, but somehow, here, still in the middle of things, doesn’t seem like the right place to ask. She would hold on to the question for sure, though.

When John leans in to lay a heavy stole around her neck, she can’t hold another question back that has occurred to her some times before.

“Is it fine for me to be wearing this? I mean, does it even work if you’re not actually a priest?”

“As long as you genuinely believe in the power of the forces you call upon, it doesn’t make any damned difference. Else, how would I get anything done?” John halts in adjusting the weighty fabric on her shoulders and gives her an amused look. “You didn’t think I actually went to seminary, did you.”

She thinks of John’s eyes on her at times first, of the eternal damnation he fell into for taking his own life second.

“What do I do?” she asks instead of a reply, ignoring the heat she can feel rising up her neck with a vague sense of embarrassment.

“Pray for him,” he says, serious again, and pulls a tattered book out of his out of the bag, flicking through the pages until he found what he was looking for. Angela catches glimpses of unsettling illustrations and black letter text, scrawled over with red and blue ink. “Remind him of heaven that actually put some rules in place, although they don’t do shit when it comes to enforcing them. Should keep him weak enough that he won’t give me much more trouble during the actual exorcism.”

 

 

Angela watches with concern as John climbs onto the bed, straddling the man’s waist and using his weight to keep him from thrashing.

“Last chance for you to make this easier for yourself.”

The answer is another growl.

“Thought as much.”

The scream that follows is one of genuine agony, and Angela smells the stench of burned flesh as John presses some form of medallion to the man’s neck.

“By the powers that compel thee, I cast ye out, thou who trespasses against the rules of the balance, you damned halfbreed bastard.”

The scream only increases in intensity, the man’s limbs twitching in a futile attempt to break free, and Angela doesn’t have to use a lot of imagination to feel pity - not for the demon, but for the poor man whose body threatens to break apart under its influence.

“ _Ave Maria, gratia plena_ ,” she begins, falling back into the litany without a hitch, closing her eyes to focus, and she’s back in church as a child with her sister at her side, one shared rosary between them because it was fine for twins to share the work, Isabel had said. “ _Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus_ -”

Her own voice and concentration help her drown out the unsettling cacophony of pained groans and powerful chants. Don’t stop, she thinks; if there’s anything you can do to protect John and help save this man, keep at it.

Something flickers at the edge of her awareness, barely - an urgent kind of desperation, lost and scared to death. The man’s consciousness, resurfacing from being buried beneath the entity having weaselled its way into his mind, she realises with a surge of excitement. She opens her eyes just in time to see John suddenly jerk back with a scream of pain, pulling his right hand against his chest.

 

It takes a few seconds for her grasp the situation - the dislocated gag, the blood on the grinning creature’s teeth, the rivulets of the same liquid running down John’s wrist - but she manages not to trip over the words regardless, never faltering in her recitation.

“Oh yes, the _great_ and _mighty_ John Constantine,” the creature sneers in a lilting singsong voice, leaning up as far as the constraints allow. “So _confident_ now that he thinks he’s bought his way back to heaven for good, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” John snaps, recovering from the shock and pressing his blood smeared palm back on the man’s forehead, pushing him down with force.

“You’ll be back with us soon enough, just you wait.”

“By the grace and mercy bestowed upon me by the Lord, I cast you out-”

“You and your ridiculous assistant over there, I’ll snap both of your necks once I’m out-”

Angela sees John lean in even closer in one sharp movement, and for a blink she fears the creature might break free again, sees it rip his throat out, but he stays just out of reach, uttering something with vicious glee in a language she doesn’t know. It’s rough and low, the power laced throughout the words instinctively making her skin crawl.

The creature rears up one more time, then drops back limply. Angela falls silent as she watches the colour return to the man’s face, the blood from his torn open wrists beginning to flow, seeping into the bed sheets, his breathing stuttering but audible.

 

 

She doesn’t wait for a word of clearance, but rushes to John’s side right away with a sudden feeling of urgency. She catches him by the arm as he stiffly climbs off the bed, swaying on his feet.

“I’m fine,” he argues, but puts up no resistance as she simply shoots him a doubting look and gently pries his right hand from where he keeps it pressed against his bloodstained shirt.

The teeth marks have dug in deep, the surrounding flesh red and swollen, and she catches him flinch as she turns over his wrist to inspect the other side.

“You should go and have that checked out at an ER stat,” she orders. “Get some tetanus shots while you’re at it.”

“I’m fine,” he insists, but there is something she can feel hum under his skin, spreading slowly but steadily like a chink in a smooth glass surface.

She stares at the bite with a frown, then up at his face.

“What did you do?” she asks, frowning. She can’t put her finger on the exact meaning of this sensation, but she trusts her intuition enough to know in case he lied to her.

“This wasn’t exactly a by-the-book exorcism,” he finally explains, not averting her eyes. “Well, the end surely wasn’t, at least, and you should never try that, ever.”

As if she could, she thinks, but keeps pressing the issue: “John, _what_ did you _do_?”

“Channel its own power to drive it out.”

Now, he has the good sense left to avoid her eyes as she stares at him, disbelieving. No wonder she can feel this dark undercurrent, although still much less prevalent than when she had first met him.

“That was stupid.”

“Maybe. He was pissing me off, though.”

She looks down at his wrist caught between her hands, the pale scars running parallel beneath it, smeared with fresh blood. You didn’t disinfect your hands, you shouldn’t be touching him at all, her rational mind tells her, but the other half remembers the feeling of holy water running over them. This wasn’t about bacteria, she would make sure he got his sorry self into a hospital once they were done, but this was about a different kind of infection.

Carefully, she puts her palms over the bite marks, feeling the warm surface of the wound against her skin.

“ _To you, o Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy,_ ” she begins, feeling John first tense, then relax in her grip. “ _What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, o Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper!_ ”

John exhales in surprise, but she already felt it before, the remnants left behind by foul magic vanishing from his system, leaving just the physical injury behind.

“How did you-” his question is disrupted by a hiss as she lets go of his hand, no matter how gently she tried doing it.

“You told me to pray for mercy as your backup, so I did.” Angela shrugs nonchalantly. “Intuition for everything else, I suppose.”

“Very interesting.”

He stares at her with undivided attention, as if he was trying to see into the mechanics over mind and empathy, and maybe even deeper than that.

“Your hand,” she reminds him, to shift the awkwardness, and then with a belated pang of guilt: “And the Langs, we need-”

 

In the distance, there are police sirens, coming closer at disconcerting speed.

“Angela, can I ask you for another favour?”

Angela looks out of the window down the street where the cop cars would surely be showing up at the top of the hill any second now, and she thinks of the drugged woman in the backroom, the tortured and bound man on the bed, traces of John’s blood on the covers and her own hands, and she feels a headache settling in.

“Go,” she exhales with a sigh of defeat. “I’ll deal with it, somehow.”

He leans in to pull the stole from her shoulders, and she fees his lips brush her temple.

“Thank you.”

And then he’s gone, as usual, and as Angela surveys the chaos the aftermath of this battle. As she hears the cars pull to a stop outside the house, she thinks that all in all, her first exorcism hadn’t been a total disaster.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Nothing says holiday spirit like exorcisms, or something. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about these two! I hope you find something to enjoy about this story.
> 
> Wishing you happy holidays,  
> your Yulegoat


End file.
